Musing Mondays: Treatment of books

Here is the third of the book-related memes in which I will occasionally participate:

Do you treat books carefully, or do you just treat them as any other object? Do you have certain things you refuse to do with books (write in them, etc)? If so, what are they?

I am almost obsessive about the treatment of books. I even hate it if the dust jacket gets bent or scuffed or develops a small tear.

Because I consider them friends, I treat books like I treat my human friends and you certainly don’t fold, bend, spindle or mutilate your friends. (Although I’m guessing the term “spindle” is as outdated as the punch cards with which it was associated.) To me, laying a book face down with the pages open is the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalk board. If I see a book at the office or at home like that (which is almost unheard of for the latter), I will put something in to mark the place and close the book. Not only will I grab anything usable at hand to place in the page I’m at, I often refrain from using the flaps you see in some paperbacks these days that can be used to mark your page. Why? I don’t want to deform the flap.

I do break the rule in one respect. In books I am reviewing, I dog ear pages I particularly want to come back to for the review. I do this to avoid writing in the book, figuring it is the lesser of two evils. I also figure you can (and I do) smooth out the dog ears once they’ve served their purpose. f there are particular passages I want to mark permanently, I use book darts, which remain in the book once it goes on the shelves. I keep one of the containers holding the darts on the bookshelf on the bed so they’re handy if I need one.